


In Step

by xenosaurus



Series: Summoner Supports (Nights) [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Developing Relationship, Explicit Consent, F/M, Insecurity, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 17:51:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14117700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenosaurus/pseuds/xenosaurus
Summary: “Takumi, I’m thanking about six different gods for you right now.”





	In Step

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Octobig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Octobig/gifts).



> this prompt was a freeform request for a Takumi fic from the lovely Octobig, and, well, I took that and ran with it. I love Takumi.
> 
> also, thank you again to Briar for betaing this monster <3

Takumi has mixed feelings about being summoned.

He has a chance to prove himself, and the recognition of being deemed a hero by the very fabric of existence is one hell of a confidence boost. At the same time, he is discovering the joys of homesickness in earnest. The food, the people, the culture; it’s all different enough to make him feel perpetually uneasy.

He furiously ignores it, and privately hopes his retainers qualify as heroic enough to be summoned themselves. He stops himself from asking after them more than once, even though he really wants to.

It’s three weeks in, while they’re resting after a narrowly won battle, that Takumi finds something that warms him from the inside out. The Summoner is sitting in front of her maps, reviewing the difficulties they had in the thick of things. Two people are injured, being treated by a healer named Serra who couldn’t be less like Sakura if she tried. Takumi is lost in thoughts of his little sister when the Summoner sighs and shoves her hands under her hood to ruffle her hair.

“Takumi, I’m thanking about six different gods for you right now.”

Takumi looks up sharply.

“Huh?”

Oh, real eloquent. The Summoner doesn’t seem to have noticed, though.

“I’ve looked at it from at least 30 angles, and there’s no way we would have won without you. Any other combination of heroes would have failed. So, yeah. You’re a godsend.”

Takumi is exhausted from the long battle but suddenly he’s struggling not to smile.

“Oh, well. Nice to be needed.”

The Summoner looks up from her maps and smiles at him, openly grateful and more than a little affectionate.

“Thank you. You’re always so reliable, Takumi.”

Takumi is starting to get flustered, and he averts his eyes.

“Now you’re just flattering me,” he says, then, after a brief pause, he mumbles-- “Nice to get compliments, though.”

The Summoner laughs good-naturedly and shakes her head as she turns back to her maps.

“Lord knows you deserve them.”

If Takumi is in a better mood than usual at dinner that night, nobody mentions it.

*

It’s easier to relax after that. It’s embarrassing if Takumi really thinks it through, but he’s much more at ease around people he knows he’s already impressed. It isn’t that he can stop trying, because he will _never_ stop trying to exceed people’s expectations, but rather that he can worry less about them looking down on him.

The Summoner certainly isn’t looking down on him. In fact, when she starts working on enhancing their weapons, she asks him for his opinion on every bow she looks at.

“You talk like you’ve never seen a quiver of arrows in your life,” Takumi says, while he’s helping her identify a set that would work well with Gordin’s weapon. He winces a little; that came out harsher than he intended it to. Before he can correct himself, the Summoner laughs and shakes her head.

“That’s because I hadn’t, before I came here. The world I’m from really only has archery as a hobby. Swords and lances too, used for sports but not actual combat training. Axes were for woodwork and not much else,” she explains, listing the weapons off on her fingers. “Oh, and magic tomes don’t even _exist_ there.”

Takumi stares at the Summoner in open confusion.

“Do you come from an entirely peaceful realm? How did you end up this talented at war strategy?”

The Summoner laughs and shakes her head.

“God, no. We just fight with guns. And knives, I suppose. Mostly guns, though.”

“So you really aren’t familiar with our weaponry,” Takumi says, thinking of the way she’d so carefully examined Fujin Yumi shortly after he arrived here. It makes more sense if she’s still trying to familiarize herself with bows as a whole, as well as the individual weapons of her soldiers.

“Anna says I’m a quick study. To be honest, though, I’ve done nothing but research and observation since I got here. I can’t let my own shortcoming keep our heroes from success in battle, so it’s the least I can do.”

Oh. Takumi can respect that.

“I’d be glad to keep helping with the bows,” Takumi offers. “Don’t worry.”

The Summoner grins broadly, which makes Takumi feel warm in a vaguely uncomfortable way. He hates blushing, and hates how often he does it regardless. But, god, she’s pretty.

“Thanks, Takumi. You’re the best. So, you were saying about arrowheads for Gordin?”

*

Takumi says things he shouldn’t. This is a constant problem, something he hates about himself, but it gets worse when he’s hungry or tired. It’s like his body decides its remaining energy would be wasted on taming his idiot tongue.

So, inevitably, he mentions his nightmares to the Summoner. He’s walking at her side on the way back from a battle, his stomach growling and his feet sore. It’s an innocent enough conversation that starts with her making a mild complaint about not getting enough sleep and spirals out of his control very quickly.

He beats himself up for it internally, but doesn’t expect her to actually follow up on it. He isn’t a child, and the Summoner has never treated him like one. It isn’t like she’s going to invite him to come wake her up to talk if his nightmares get bad, the way Takumi’s mother once did.

But something _does_ come of it, because she brings a pot of tea to his door one evening. The smell is unfamiliar, so it isn’t one of the herbal blends they often have at dinner.

“Good evening,” he says, confused, when he opens the door and finds her there. He’d been doing some weapon maintenance before bed, much as he does every night, when she knocked. Apparently with her elbow, given her posture and the way she’s holding the teapot and mugs. “What are you doing here?”

Ugh, more blunt that he should be. In what’s becoming a pattern, she doesn’t comment on the rudeness, if she even notices it.

“Hey, Takumi,” she says, grinning. “I brought you some tea that’s supposed to help you sleep better.”

Takumi’s hackles immediately go up, on guard for anything that could even potentially be mistaken for pity.

“I don’t need--”

“No, I know. You’ve just been doing so much for me lately, this was the only thing I could think of to return the favor.”

That startles Takumi right out of his defensive posture.

“You… wanted to do something nice for me?”

“Yeah! I feel like every time we spend time together, it’s you doing me a favor. Gotta even things out somehow.”

Again, Takumi chooses his next words impulsively.

“Then why don’t you have tea with me? It would be nice to have company. Err, only if you don’t have to be somewhere,” he grumbles, preemptively cringing away from the sting of rejection. God, why did he just say that? Of course she has other places to be--

“No, I can stay. I was just going to head to bed after this.”

“Don’t let me keep you up,” Takumi says, already thinking of the chaos that a sleep-deprived tactician could cause in the morning. The Summoner is already settling down to pour the tea, though.

“I’ll take tea with a handsome archer over an extra hour of sleep, thank you very much,” the Summoner says, grinning playfully. Takumi swallows hard.

“You, uh, really think I’m handsome? Or was that a joke?” Takumi asks, squinting suspiciously at her.

The Summoner responds by lowering her hood, letting him see her face properly. His heart doesn’t really know what to do with that, skipping beats and shifting tempo like an amateur drummer.

“Oh, don’t be modest. Of course you’re handsome.”

“You’re, uh-- you too. You’re good-looking, I mean.”

God, Takumi wishes he was better at flirting. Still, he made the Summoner smile, and that’s worth something.

“Sweet-talker,” she says, her voice soft with fondness, and hands him a cup of tea.

The tea doesn’t do much for his nightmares, but the company does wonders for his mood.

*

Regardless of Takumi’s lack of talent in the area, the flirting continues. The Summoner already favored him in battle and in training, but now she finds him in their downtime as well. At first, it makes him uneasy to have her sitting with him while he trains, observing or reading one of her massive books of tactics. It feels like being judged.

Except that she never makes snide comments or corrections. Instead, she cheers when he pulls off trick shots and reads aloud from her books. He gets comfortable enough that this turns into regular conversation, and then he starts to _miss her_ when she’s not around.

He’s pretty sure this is what pining is. God, he’s pathetic.

Takumi would never admit to it, but he starts looking for excuses to seek her out.

“How did you get stuck doing this on top of everything else?” he asks one evening when he tracks her down only to find her in the kitchen, peeling potatoes.

“I don’t like being idle,” she admits, gesturing vaguely with a half-peeled potato still in her hand. “It’s Anna’s turn with the maps and I don’t want to burden anyone with the task of teaching me extremely basic swordsmanship when they would otherwise be resting.”

“So you decided to help with the cooking, of all things?” Takumi asks, frowning and crossing his arms over his chest. The Summoner sighs and finally sets down the potato she’d been flailing around.

“I just feel useless, that’s all. I don’t have the right background for any of this, and there’s no time to catch up. I’ve never stabbed anyone before, let alone while _they_ were trying to stab _me_.”

Takumi doesn’t like the idea of sending her into the heat of things. The people they fight are mostly legendary heroes, and the Summoner is a novice whose signature weapon has no combat applications.

“You don’t have to fight. I’ll protect you, so you can just worry about tactics,” Takumi says. “And potatoes, I guess.”

The Summoner turns to him, and he’s not sure if he’s imagining it, but her face looks a bit pink.

Turns out he isn’t imagining it, because the next thing she does is lean in and kiss him on the cheek. He inhales sharply through his nose and feels his whole body flush.

“Oh,” he says, raising a hand to touch the place she just kissed. She grins wildly, like there’s too much happiness to fit in her body.

“I knew you were a hero, Takumi, but I guess you’re _my_ hero specifically, huh?”

“Don’t tease me,” Takumi grumbles, furiously embarrassed.

“I’m not teasing! You really do make me feel special. I like you a lot,” she says, reaching out to take his hands.

“You’re covered in potato grime,” Takumi says, for some stupid reason. The words are barely out of his mouth before he regrets saying them. Still, it makes the Summoner laugh.

“Want me to wash my hands before I kiss you again?”

Takumi swallows and shakes his head.

“No, um, I think that’d be fine regardless of the state of your hands.”

So she kisses him, properly this time.

*

Whatever else can be said about the world the Summoner comes from, they are _not_ subtle about courtship there.

Once she’s had a taste of kissing him, it seems to be all she wants to do. It becomes a greeting, a thank you, something to fill breaks in conversation. Takumi can’t bring himself to complain, as much as he’s embarrassed by some of the more public ones. He’s a bit high on all the affection.

There’s gossip about it, of course. He overhears one of the swordsmen complaining about how grouchy he gets when the Summoner doesn’t have time for him in the lead-up to a big battle, and a few of the healers have started giggling to themselves when he walks near them. It sets him on edge, but the Summoner pulling him behind a tree to make out in between lunch and their next training exercise is absolutely worth it.

It probably shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does when she invites him to her quarters for tea without actually bringing the kettle with her.

“Are you sure?” he asks in between kisses, trying not to pant. The Summoner is undoing the fasteners holding his clothes together without looking, all of her focus on kissing him instead.

“I’m past ‘sure’ and into ‘enthusiastic’,” the Summoner says, laughing breathlessly. “But we don’t have to, if you don’t--”

Takumi shakes his head and kisses her again, bringing his hands up to cradle her face. “No, I want to. Gods, do I want to. I just-- I don’t want to mess this up.”

“You haven’t messed anything up in the entire time I’ve known you,” the Summoner says, tugging at his clothes.

“Are you kidding? I’ve embarrassed myself, and you by mere _association_ , twice _today_ \--”

“Takumi, hey. You’re okay. We’re okay. I’m not going to laugh at you.”

Emotion wells up in Takumi’s chest and he has to swallow before he can speak.

“I’m…”

And then he gives up, deciding on a passionate kiss instead. The Summoner makes a soft, happy sound and stops fighting with Takumi’s clothes, just holding onto the fabric like a lifeline instead.

Taking off the Summoner’s robe is something that’s occupied Takumi’s thoughts for a while now, both in innocent and more sexual contexts. He appreciates seeing her face, but there’s also something that makes him shiver with want to watch it pool around her feet. She doesn’t bother to pick it up, just returns to her previous task of trying to get his clothes off without looking. This time, the distraction is kissing his throat.

Takumi tilts his head back and closes his eyes for a brief moment, savoring the sensation. His skin feels hypersensitive, like he’s trying to soak up every bit of pleasure she’s offering him.

She snaps him out of his trance accidentally when she tilts her head and finds a spot under his jaw that makes him moan. The noise is entirely involuntary and he feels the embarrassment of it through his whole body.

True to her word, the Summoner doesn’t laugh. Instead, she hums in response to the sound, then pauses just long enough to speak.

“Feels good?” she asks, before nosing at his neck, like she just can’t bear to be separated long enough for him to actually answer her.

“Y-Yeah,” he says, and she dives back in, sucking at that spot with the same tactical precision with which she directs battles. The noise Takumi makes this time is louder, and he digs his fingers into the back of her remaining clothes.

“ _Ah_ \-- okay, enough, enough, let me take some clothes off,” Takumi says, forcing himself out of the impulse to just let her have her way with him. The Summoner takes a step back.

“Um. Yeah, I’m totally in favor of that. Go ahead,” she says, looking him up and down like she’s already undressing him with her eyes. Her gaze catches on his groin and on what must be a mark forming on his neck; suddenly self-conscious, he forges ahead, effortlessly undoing the fasteners she’d been struggling with.

“God, you’re attractive,” the Summoner says, once he’s naked from the waist up. She’s fidgeting with her own fingers, giving the impression that she has to keep her hands busy to keep them off of him.

“N-Now you,” Takumi says, before catching himself. “If you’re okay with that!”

He’s barely done speaking before the Summoner is stripping out of her remaining clothes, leaving them in the same pile as her robe. Her underwear reminds him of the Nohrian swimwear, but he doesn’t really dwell on it, thoroughly distracted by the exposed skin. There are a few women in the army who don’t wear much more than this, but Takumi isn’t some pervert. He knows the difference between sexual and casual nudity.

“Come here,” she says, taking a few steps backwards to sit down on the bed with her arms open in a blatant invitation for him to join her. Takumi follows, not sure exactly what she’s asking for until he gets close enough that she lays down on her back. From there, she swings her legs up so her whole body is comfortably situated on top of the covers.

Awkwardly, Takumi crawls onto the bed with her, taking care not to put his knees anywhere that might hurt her. She smiles up at him and raises her hands to take the ties out of his hair. Once she’s got them, it falls to create a curtain around his face. The Summoner pushes herself up on one elbow to get closer to him, and Takumi closes the remaining distance to kiss her, his hair obscuring his view of everything but her. He’s stunned by how _safe_ this feels, all of his fears of mockery falling away for a brief, shining moment. He’s still jittery as all hell, but there’s no genuine dread in his stomach.

“Can I touch you?” she whispers, barely an inch from his face. Takumi swallows hard and nods, unable to find words. The Summoner reaches down between them and gives his cock a gentle squeeze, testing the waters. Takumi inhales sharply and breathes out a sound that is far too close to a whine for his liking.

“Good lord, make that noise again,” the Summoner says, all in a rush. Takumi opens his eyes, which he doesn’t remember closing, to look at her in surprise.

“You _liked_ that?” he asks, incredulous. Sure enough, the Summoner is staring at him with pupils blown and a look on her face like she’s been hit in the head.

“You’re so hot it might be a crime,” the Summoner says, her tone close to a complaint.

When Takumi gives her a disbelieving look, she pulls him down for a _very_ enthusiastic kiss. He comes out of it feeling tingly and a little lightheaded, her point firmly made.

“I have physical evidence to back up my claim, if that’s what you’re looking for,” she says, grinning at him. When Takumi looks confused, she nudges his arm until he gets the picture and lets her have his hand. She guides it between her legs. Her underwear is damp against his fingers and she’s smiling at him like there’s nowhere she’d rather be. He’s so turned on he can’t see straight.

Takumi loses track of the next few minutes. Taking off those last scraps of clothing is a challenge when they’re sharing a firm refusal to untangle from each other. At one point they nearly knock themselves clear off the bed. Takumi’s has to grab the Summoner around the waist and haul her back up to keep them both from ending up on the floor.

“Good save,” the Summoner says breathlessly, kissing Takumi’s bare shoulder in an oddly chaste gesture of affection.

“This is why futons are better,” Takumi grumbles, which makes the Summoner laugh. Even two weeks ago, Takumi would have said someone laughing while in bed with you is a bad thing. Turns out, he would have been wrong. He feels only affection right now, not shame.

“Alright, we’ll do this in your room next time, then,” the Summoner says, grinning.

“Deal,” Takumi agrees, making sure she’s securely on the bed before leaning in for another kiss.

“Ready?” the Summoner asks, running a hand down his back to settle on his hip. It makes Takumi shiver, but he’s suddenly aware that there’s something they haven’t addressed.

“Wait, what about the risk of, err--”

“I’ve been getting regular birth control spells from the medics, just in case.”

That sends Takumi reeling, and probably for entirely the wrong reason.

“Is _that_ why they’ve been giggling at me?!”

The Summoner laughs, but her expression is sympathetic. “Sorry, our healers are a bunch of gossips.”

Takumi groans and drops his head onto the Summoner’s shoulder.

“That’s so embarrassing,” he complains.

“They’re just jealous,” the Summoner says solemnly. “That you’re getting laid and they’re not.”

Takumi surprises himself by laughing.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You like it,” the Summoner says, tilting her head to kiss his ear, which is the closest thing to her when his face is hidden in her shoulder.

“Yeah. I do,” Takumi admits. “You’re… pretty great.”

“You don’t need to sweet-talk me, I’m already naked,” the Summoner jokes. Takumi extracts himself from her shoulder to give her an indignant look.

“I’m being serious!”

“I know,” the Summoner says, smiling softly. “Go on, then. Let’s do this.”

“Right,” Takumi says, taking a deep breath. He reaches between them to line himself up.

When he sinks in, it’s finally the Summoner’s turn to make an involuntary noise of pleasure. Takumi can barely process it, because every thought in his head was just utterly destroyed. This feels so _good_. His hips jerk and he hurries to establish a rhythm to make it seem intentional instead of mindless.

“God, yeah, that’s it,” the Summoner babbles as he starts to move, digging her nails into his back. She’s going to leave marks, and people are going to see them in the baths tomorrow.

Takumi finds that he doesn’t care about the gossip in the slightest.

Let them judge.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is @[xenosaurus](http://xenosaurus.tumblr.com), feel free to send me your prompts there!


End file.
